Gravy and Grilled Cheese and Side Salad

hey hey hey.
Gravy and grilled cheese, amirite? Except, I skimmed the fat from this leftover tourtiere broth before making gravy with it, and also there is a salad on the plate (the salad occupies the majority of the plate).
The salad is just green bits from a bin, then leftover cranberry tart filling (cran. sauce except more reduced, sweeter, and spiced), mom's raspberry vinegar, and some candied crushed walnuts I made for a salad a week or two ago.
Happy with the salad, wish I'd left the fat in the gravy though. Could be thicker/fuller.

Day Off!

Instead of studying for my math midterm tomorrow, I am planning a day of delicious food!

Breakfast started with a fruit salad, and made it's way to fancy steel cut oats.

I'm going to prep these sweet potato garlic knots before I get down to business with lunch: Risotto with red swiss chard and goat cheese Gouda.

Then I am classing it down and doubling this recipe to make my own pizza pockets to freeze! I'm introducing many different veggie options.

I will probably eat one or two with the soup I'll eventually put on. Who even knows what it will be!

I did not take this photo

Hurray!

Beans & Rice & Rye

OK! So I love refried beans. Point of interest if you didn't already know, but the re prefix in Spanish adds emphasis instead of denoting repetition, so refrito is more accurately translated as 'fried all to hell' rather than 're-fried'.
Anyways! How do I like these things?
Well, mince up some garlic and a chipotle pepper (visited every grocery store in town looking for them), and fry them up with a little bit of thinly sliced then chopped up chorizo (spread a little meat out for extra texture and flavour). When the oil's all nice and red from taking in the sauce of the chipotles (unless, like, you got fresh chipotles somehow?), throw in them refried black beans from a can. Fry it up, then for the last minute, throw in chopped parsley, crumbled feta, and grated white cheddar (close enough for queso blanco). Mix it, heat it, plate it. Along with some rice and flatbreads rye bread and sour cream and tomatoes & parsley for garnish. Rye is, of course, not the typical pairing, but it's what I've got.



I was trying to plate it up nice and got the parsley in there, then mom and her friend BJ (she makes beads and jewelry, sells them here, she is from the Yukon or one of the territories, I think?) were hanging around and drinking wine and demanding cooking demonstrations (I think you would fit right in there, drinking wine with ladies and making me cook things), and BJ being an artist and mom being a quilter, they said I needed some red so there was some more adobo on top of the rice and I slipped the tomatoes in underneath after the fact by guiding them in with a knife. The beans actually looked a lot nicer in the pan spread out but on the plate you're missing all the nice little bits of stuff in there.

action shot!

All mexican food shots © my mom.

Bonus "Consuming All My Rye Bread" pictures:

meats&cheeses                                                        mushroom&onion grilled cheese

Pasta, mostly blanco

So, we need to have a good discussion about relationship debrief, friendship futures, and all applicable boundaries, intentions, and emotions, but I am not going to wait for that conversation to get back to the blog because frankly this is my favorite game.

Tonight was simple spaghetti. Boiled some noodles, heated some oil and fried some minced garlic in it lightly, drained the noodles, tossed some chopped parsley in the pan with the oil and garlic, then threw the noodles plus crumbled feta and grated parmesean et al. in there. Also lots of fresh cracked pepper on top.
Pretty delicious. Pasta was perfectly al dente. Would probably serve with maybe half a grilled chicken breast on the side, and maybe some nice soup (carrot or tomato?). As it was just me for late supper, I ate it alone and was happy with that.



Probably will not see you tonight as I hope to be in bed before 9:00. Not sure when this week might be good to talk, but I'll talk to you later.

Tortellini w/shoots and peppers

I needed to use up the last of hot peppers and shoots, so I fried some garlic in oil (should have done butter, what was I thinking!), then stir-fried the chopped up peppers, then the shoots until wilted, then added the cooked tortellini, and tossed everything around to get things coated. Served on a plate with grated cheddar.



Shoots should have been cut in half, they were too long to get a good mix on the go, but it was nice and fresh tasting and no doubt healthy, right?


BONUS SHOOT-ROOT-SHOT:
Yeah those guys just went to town there. Not sure how I'm going to reclaim my soil, probably just shake it all out. If we had a compost here, I'd just toss the works in there, but we don't and I'm not going to waste good soil by just throwing it into the city compost every time I do shoots, so I'll probably shake it out later.

Apple Curries

Hey James so what did you get up to this weekend?
Oh, you know, made a two-curry meal to impress the lady-friend.
Nice! What did she think?
well uh she liked the pictures?

OK so if you're cooking two curries, the first step is cook some chicken fingers. I always get in over my head and start cooking when hungry and then like an hour later I'm just starving and angry and grumpy and then I don't enjoy supper and I hate life.
As a bonus, Janes chicken fingers were on sale again! At both grocery store chains? I do not know why but if you are giving me $7 off a box of breaded not-mechanically-separated chicken cutlets I guess I am just going to have to go for it.



Chicken fingers fix my ills.

OK, two curries: First, based on this recipe that I like for chicken vindaloo, is mostly that recipe with apples and roasted hot red peppers instead of chicken. You caramelize some onions, de-glaze the pan with some vinegar, then process the onions with some oil for an onion sauce (vinegar builds up the heat). Then there's a curry-paste made of garlic, ginger, hot peppers (jalapeno this time), and spices, which is cooked in pan after some coriander and mustard seeds have been toasted, then the apples get cooked in it, then the onion sauce goes on and it goes on low heat with a cover for a little while.



chop chop chop



cook cook cook

Second curry is just what you'd imagine from apple curry. Garlic and ginger fried in a pan, chopped onion added, apples added, raisins and curry spices added, fried a bunch until it's the desired doneness (this time, on the firm side to contrast the soft apples in caramelized onion sauce.

Then there is some rice and some flat bread and some yogurt and some chutney.




First curry was real good. Wish I'd added two hot peppers, though, could have used some more potency. Also, maybe an apple less so there'd be a better apple:sauce ratio? Maybe explore this onion sauce idea with roasted apples in it for a sweet sauce to use with pork or chicken later.
Second curry was OK. Could have used more curry powder. Raisins really added an excellent meaty texture that filled out the dish.
Two curries contrasted well in texture and flavour, which was nice because I was afraid of not having enough distinction between the two.
Chutney and yogurt worked really well. Did not make either of those, though.

Maybe making two curries is a little ridiculous. At least I have prepared meals for the next day or two now.

Don't be intimidated that I made two, I am silly. Still looking forwards to seeing what you make!

Also I am cheating with the flat bread I did not make that tonight; in the interests of full disclosure it is actually from a batch of hamburger buns that I made on friday but rolled too thin so they came out as pita by mistake.

Baked Apple

OK you already kind of know what's going on here. Apple, rye flakes, sugar, papaya (dried), sugar, cinnamon.



Pretty OK. Papaya, not again will I do that. Didn't really have a great texture or anything, didn't really blend with the flavours, not like raisins do.
Still, tasty! Rye flakes were OK but I think I like the oat flavour better.